Up Up and Away

by Nesta Tuomey

  It was the first edition, so no names were given but Kay knew as certainly as if it were printed in capital letters, that the pilot was Graham. Staring at the paper she felt her knees shake and her stomach churn. A great void stretched.

  Graham dead! Gone! No more!

  With a choked, despairing cry she stumbled from the shop.

  When Maura Kane heard of the air crash she was in her plush, new, sound-proof office in the Virgo Airways wing of Heathrow Airport, putting the finishing touches to her stewardess training programme.

  Since coming back from Australia everything had moved so fast for Maura it was like a dream. When she had rung Virgo, they had been impressed by her credentials and arranged a meeting straight away. Only a day back in London, she had done the interview and was signed up at once.

  She had finished up with Celtic Airways, telephoning Oliver McGrattan to tell him that her resignation was in the post and he could take her unpaid leave in lieu of notice. He had been satisfactorily speechless and only managed an outraged squawk before she put down the phone. Worth six weeks pay any day, Maura considered.

  Reading details of the Colombo air crash she wondered who the Irish pilot had been. She felt saddened and regretful. Whoever he was she had almost certainly flown with him.

  Everyone connected with an airline feels a shiver of dread on hearing of an air crash but probably no one can empathise quite so deeply as other aircrew. They are familiar with the planes and the life and no matter whether they belong in the cabin or on the flight deck, they share an affinity with the stricken aircraft and her crew. At one time or another they have been in similar near-miss situations themselves and cannot help thinking, there but for the grace of God...

  Maura was no different. She found herself dwelling almost morbidly on the details. This was partly because there was an Irish pilot involved. She had no idea who was out in Karachi at the present moment but he was obviously a senior pilot if he had been in command of the jet. Eddie would know, she thought.

  A couple of times a week, Captain Drummond dropped by on turnaround for a chat and it was ridiculous how much Maura found herself looking forward to these informal meetings. She was lonely for Celtic Airways and he was her only contact these days. The last time he had made one of his impromptu visits she had seen the way her secretary eyed him and realised with a little glow, just how attractive Jackie found the mature pilot.

  ‘You didn’t think I was going to let you vanish out of my life just like that,’ he chided smiling when he appeared in her doorway one day. The sight of the Celtic Airways uniform had sent Maura’s pulse racing, bringing memories of Simon rushing painfully back. As if sensing this, he had stood for a moment pulling gently on his moustache, gazing quizzically down at her.

  ‘Just thought I’d break the ice before asking you out to dinner some night,’ he gave a boyish grin. ‘It’s great to see you, Maura. Celtic Airways isn’t the same since you left.’

  Maura vowed to get all the details from Eddie when next he appeared in her office. She had not long to wait.

  At five o’clock her secretary showed Captain Drummond in and vanished discreetly to the outer office. Maura learned to her regret who the Irish pilot was. She had flown with Graham Pender in the past and had always liked and admired him.

  Judy Mathews listened to the evening news on the car radio as she sped away from the airport in her Jaguar. The names of the pilots were given. At first she could not believe what she was hearing. She raised the volume and listened intently to the details.

  But there was no mistake. It was Graham.

  As the tragedy of it sank in she felt a painful constriction in her chest and her eyes blurred with tears. His death released painful memories she had thought long buried and forgotten.

  She dashed them away and wondered how Sile was bearing up. And his sons. Over the years Judy had often seen them with him at the airport, and now she ached for their loss.

  In Mellwood College the first post that day had brought joy to Nicky Pender. He was thrilled when he got his father’s letter telling him he was coming home two months ahead of time. It was wonderful and unexpected.

  Nicky did not question how this miracle had come about. It was enough to know that in another two weeks his beloved father would be back again. All day he sat at his desk longing for school to be over. Whenever he moved his arm, the thin airmail letter in his blazer pocket gave a satisfying crackle. Nicky moved his arm often, for the sheer pleasure of knowing the letter was there.

  After last class he stayed on in the classroom to write his reply. He took out the notepad his mother had given him when he returned to school after Christmas and carefully filled his fountain pen with ink. He hoped no one would barge in on him for he was not meant to be there. The words had been forming in his head all day and he quickly wrote them down.

  ‘Great you are coming home for Easter... can’t wait... longing to see you, Dad,’ he poured out his heart.

  Outside the window, boys ran shouting past. A bell sounded.

  Quickly, he signed, ‘Lots of love, Nicky,’ and put the sheets of paper in an envelope. He had just written ‘Captain Graham Pender’ in big letters on the outside when the door to the classroom opened.

  Nicky looked up in guilty alarm and saw to his dismay that the headmaster, Father Coyle, was standing in the doorway.

  ‘I’m sorry, Father,’ he blurted, getting to his feet. ‘I just wanted to write a letter. I didn’t mean...’ His voice tailed off in embarrassment and he lowered his flushed face.

  ‘That’s all right, Nicholas.’ The priest’s voice was kindly. He beckoned him forward. Hesitantly, Nicholas obeyed. To his surprise, he felt a gentle arm about his shoulder. ‘Come along, my boy, there is someone to see you.’

  In this manner they went out to the corridor. Down the well of the staircase Nicholas saw his mother standing with his brother in the hall. What’s she doing here, he wondered in pleased surprise. She never visited during the week.

  Then as Nicholas drew nearer and saw Jeremy’s face, an icy dread gripped him. His tough, devil-may-care, older brother was crying, the tears pouring unchecked down his face.

  FIFTY NINE

  In Colombo the investigation into the crash was quickly completed. Pilot negligence was ruled out. The 707’s crash into a two hundred foot hill on its approach to the runway had been caused by bad weather conditions and the failure of the Instrument Landing System. In the cockpit it was found that on impact the elevators were fully up, the throttles fully open and the control column fully back. At the last moment the captain of the flight deck had seen how low they were and too late, had tried to climb. It was an open-and-shut case.

  Ralph was at the enquiry and he flew back afterwards to Karachi with the few possessions gathered from the scene of the crash belonging to John and Graham. He was glad there had been no blame attached to the pilots. Now that the investigation was over, he could admit to being a little worried. He knew that Graham was an able and experienced flyer and had flown an impressive number of piston-engined and turboprop aircraft but his jet experience was comparatively limited. It was the same with John who was his junior. He had learned to fly in the RAF and had only just converted to commercial jet flying before coming out east.

  Ralph’s eyes misted when he thought of the younger man. They had been like brothers. In the room he had shared with John, he packed the other pilot’s clothes and books into his suitcase and with a pained expression, added in the silver-framed photos of John’s wife and children. Their Easter reunion so warmly anticipated on either side, would not happen now. He shut the case and left it against the wall. The whole operation had taken Ralph ten minutes.

  He clenched his unlit pipe between his teeth and resolutely went along the passage to carry out the same grim task in Graham’s room. There it did not even take him so long.

  When he had laid the Irish pilot’s belongings in his case he threw in his wallet and monogrammed gold cigarette lighter, both of
which had been found with the badly burned bodies in the wreckage. On the bureau he found an envelope. It was not stamped or stuck.

  Ralph stared curiously at the name on the front. It was not addressed to Graham’s wife. Some stewardess, Ralph correctly assumed.

  Thoughtfully he took a turn about the room. Then he reached into the case and took out the badly burned wallet. With a fastidious frown, he laid the contents on the bed. There were the usual credit cards and family photos. The photos had been protected from the worst of the heat by the leather and were only slightly faded and curling at the edges. Two boys which he took to be Graham’s sons, one of them with wavy dark hair and eyes that were strikingly like his father’s, and one of a pretty dark-haired girl snapped at the seaside. She looked almost young enough to be Graham’s daughter, but Ralph knew that the pilot had only two children. He stared at it for a long time before replacing everything else carefully in the wallet and returning it to the case.

  Compelled by some instinct, he slipped the girl’s picture in with the letter and sealed the envelope. On his way over to the pilots’ mess he stamped it and dropped it in the mailbox.

  Sitting before the television in the company of his family, Dave learned from the evening news of the Colombo air crash. The arrangements for his German transfer were finalised at last, so he was relaxing in the knowledge that in another fortnight he would be finished at Maxwell’s and on his way. That morning his secretary had booked his air ticket and it would be sent on to the office the following week.

  But the news of the crash drove all thoughts of Germany away. He got up at once and hurried down to Kay’s house. She would be devastated. From all she had confessed to him on the night they drove to the sea, Dave realised the crashed Irish pilot was the man she was in love with.

  When he got there he found the house in darkness. He turned away and slowly returned home, thinking of himself that Captain Pender’s death had effectively put an end to Kay’s recovery. It was so unfair. Just when she was beginning to get over him at last.

  Dave had always known what he wanted and how to go about getting it. From the beginning he had put his career first, never questioning it was the right thing to do. Now he wasn’t so sure anymore.

  Over the years Dave had gone out with a number of girls but compared to Kay, they had all lacked something and he had never dated them beyond a few times. He supposed they bored him. Kay never did that. Sometimes she drove him to anger and exasperation but boredom never!

  On the night she had confided her sad story to him, she had managed to burrow her way even deeper into his heart. That night, he had seen a new, appealingly vulnerable side to her. He would have given anything to banish the pain from her eyes and make her forget the married pilot, who had so bewitched her that she talked of giving up everything to run away with him. She had always been such a beautiful, spirited girl, plucky and determined - qualities which had drawn Dave to her from the start - and it troubled him to see her so crushed and defeated. Now fate had thrown another blow her way.

  He called round the next night and the night after that but he never found Kay at home. There was nothing he could do for her but give her time. But time was running out. In a little over two weeks he was going away and he had not even told her yet he was going.

  SIXTY

  Had the circumstances of Graham’s death not been so tragic, Kay would have recovered more quickly, but the shock of the headlines remained vivid. The healing process, already begun when she believed herself unloved, was halted. Kay was filled with sorrow and pity, besieged by images that would not go away. Her mind would return again and again to the terrible fact that Graham was dead, that Graham would never come back.

  Then there was the conviction that he had never loved her, he who had gone away without even a note of farewell. Terrible to think she was left with nothing. The thought made her want to moan and cry. In moments she even found herself regretting that she had not become pregnant by him that one time they had made love. It would have given her something of him that no one could take from her. There would never be another chance.

  Her distress flared again when their bodies were flown back. The co-pilot was from County Down. Kay did not attend the funeral. She preferred to remember Graham alive. But she could not avoid hearing the rumours, or close her ears to the grisly speculations that went on in the restroom about the badly burned remains of the pilots, some even said the coffins were empty or as good as.

  That was the worst of all, visualising that beautiful body disintegrated, burned and maimed. The horror of it would not go away.

  And just when time was beginning to blunt the anguish, his letter arrived like a portent from the grave.

  Checking the noticeboard before going out on her flight Kay found the thin airmail envelope addressed to her in Captain Pender’s distinctive hand, and was gripped by a superstitious fear. It was a moment before she could bring herself to take it down. Then as her unsteady fingers ripped the flimsy envelope, a photograph fell out and she stared uncomprehendingly at the picture of herself, the one she had given Graham at the start of their affair. He had kept it all this time.

  Why then had he suddenly decided to return it? Slowly her eyes turned to the letter itself.

  ‘My Kitty,’ wrote Graham,

  ‘Something has to be very wrong that in all these weeks you haven’t answered my letter. Knowing you as I do, I can’t believe you deliberately mean to be unkind. Anyway I’ve decided to cut short my stint here in Karachi by two months and will be back home in time for Easter.

  I realise now I was wrong to think I could possibly forget you. These past weeks have been a hell of loneliness and I have had ample time to think things over. What has become very clear to me is the fact that I love you and do not want to spend my life without you.

  My dearest, I think I loved you from the first moment of setting eyes on you, only in my blindness I refused to see it. I’m afraid I don’t have a lot to offer you and I am so much older than you besides but whatever the future holds, I will gladly face it so long as you are with me. All I hope is that you can find it in your heart to forgive me and that together we can try and put these miserable months behind us as if they never happened.

  Perhaps when I come back we might go down to Portugal for a few days. It can be magical this time of year. Or Paris, if you prefer. I can’t wait to hold you in my arms again and be reassured as to the affection of my own sweetest Kitty.’

  Regret! Kay felt her heart swamped with it. That there had been a letter she had never received, that here now, too late, was offered everything to which she had ever aspired. Portugal! Paris! Her head whirled at the prospect of just the two of them away together, nights as well as days. Oh God! How wonderful it would have been!

  Trembling, she sank down and read the letter again. But why the photograph, she wondered, a pained look in her eyes. Why send it back if he was returning to her like he said? She turned it over in her hand and for the first time became aware of its brown faded appearance, the curling edges. Suddenly she understood. It was enclosed afterwards.

  The knowledge devastated her. But the assurance that he had loved her and was coming back to her, carried her through into the light. Graham had loved her, had always loved her.

  The tragedy of it was he had not discovered it sooner.

  As she folded away the letter there was an ache in her heart for all that had been and could never be again. Sadly, she mourned the final act in the romance which had begun that October day eighteen months earlier and the love which blossomed between them, colouring her whole existence. With a pang, she acknowledged that it had not been over when she had read the terrible headlines, not even then. But it was now. At last it was finished.

  It would have helped Kay if she could have shared her sorrow with her friends but when she met Sally or Florrie, she deliberately kept to lighter topics, not wanting to burden them with her problems. She was afraid that if she began to talk about Graham, she would
never be able to stop and was relieved when neither girl mentioned him. It was not disinterest on their part she knew. Florrie had been terribly supportive when her affair had ended but these days she was in the new flat, and Sally was all taken up with her Spanish romance.

  She had decided to go back with Sally to Spain. With its lovely warm climate, it was just what she needed to cheer her up and besides, Carlos was writing all the time, urging her to come. She was not in love with him but he would be a distraction from her sad thoughts. Molly would not be coming back from Kilshaughlin until May, when the weather grew warmer, so Kay bought her ticket and made the necessary arrangements.

  In the days that followed, Dave called twice but did not stay long. It was obvious he was only doing it out of kindness. Probably he pitied her all alone in the house and felt a certain responsibility towards her. He had always been fond of Molly and maybe he kept up the visits because he felt it was what she would want. Certainly he was no longer enamoured of her, Kay was convinced, if he ever had been. After all she had told him about Graham any attraction she had possessed for him must have quickly died. Anyway he was clearly keen on Florrie.

  She didn’t realise that Dave was deliberately holding back to give her time to get over the trauma of Graham’s death. But there was a limit to how long he could wait, could afford to wait. This he recognised the last evening he called, the night Peg went missing.

  For some time he had been concerned about Kay being on her own in the house with the senile old woman. She was becoming stranger all the time and had taken to patrolling the landings at night, singing hymns in her cracked voice. The previous day she had gone out after lunch and had not been seen since. When he heard, Dave advised Kay to ring Winifred and let her know.